A Day to Celebrate All Women

Want to know why we need an International Women’s Day? Look no further than Mhairi Black MP’s speech.

Misogyny is rife in our society. Women are belittled, threatened, victimised, assaulted and overlooked in all areas of society. Every. Single. Day.

This video is one example why, in my opinion, feminism is still relevant as a political movement. It highlights the very real situation countless women are in currently – subjected to violence and degradation simply for being female.

Violence against women is not in decline. If anything, with technological advances, women are faced with evolving dangers and laws that lack adequate protections. For example, the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, known colloquially as Revenge Porn, is on the rise and only recently did Scottish law catch up to it.

The UK Government’s latest Violence Against Women and Girls Digest found that “violence against adolescent girls is understudied, with most research looking only at the impact on one form of violence”. Child marriage is a huge issue worldwide, and tens of millions of adolescent girls are subjected to sexual violence every year.

Around the world, girls are being denied education. Or unable to attend school because of period poverty. Female Genital Mutilation is a widespread problem – some 24,000 girls are at risk of undergoing FGM in the UK alone.

Findings from the Wave 10 post-campaign evaluation of the Domestic Abuse Campaign 2006/07 found that “[a] domestic violence incident is recorded every 10 minutes in Scotland”.

Penny Mordaunt highlighted a number of other issues faced by women and girls worldwide. That list is anything but exhaustive, but it does light a fire in my belly.